Okay. On Tuesday the 5th February, I swore to myself that Wednesday the 8th, was going to be a day choc full of studying hard and not getting distracted.

One problem? I was on the internet. Scanning blogs and flicking over my favorites tab. What forgotten old wishful recipes were stored on here?

“HEY! Peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies!”

These are the bestest, yummiest, softest peanut butter cookies I’ve ever had to munch on. They are gooey and soft. I used crunchy peanut butter (budgeting), but the original recipe called for smooth – they are dense but fluffy, filling… but oh so heavenly.

Only the day before I was grazing on some store bought peanut butter granola bars. After tasting these – I’ve come to the conclusion that stores just blow dry their bars in freeze dried peanuts. The texture of these is incomparable to nada! Try for yourself peoples!

Peanut butter chocolate chunk chip cookies. Soft and chewy!

Anyhow, within a few seconds, I concluded that I didn’t need an education and never would have to study if my morning was graced with freshly baked peanut butter cookies. So off to the store I ran to top up on cheap bittersweet chocolate and extra peanut butter (If you use a jar, you replace a jar. Then you never run out – simples)

The craving fuelled my run there and back. It was a beautiful sunny day actually, spring times kicking in here in London. About 3 months early, but thou shalt embrace…

The cookies were incredibly simple to make, flour-less, butter less and oil-free. Man…that jar was so tempting. I used the biggest spoon (within reason) hat I could find to scoop out out the oily goodness…do you have any idea how hard it was to resist this? I’m sorry I look like such a bare monkey. I had literally woken up, studied and ran to the store. No precautions taken on the appearance side of things here.

But seriously…

Anyway, being the smart ass I am, I decided to put the oven onto 200* to ‘warm’ up’ quicker. Awkward.

I forgot to turn it down. The cookies were supposed to be baked at 175 for 8 minutes. Exactly. Uh whoops. On the 6 minute mark I was rescuing the cookies and picking off any extra browned bits. (No problem though, if all else failed I could have just said they were wannabe chocolate chunks) But nevertheless, back in they went on 100 for an extra 5 minutes. And they came out just fine! Phew.

I also configured a list on how to make your life productive during baking times (The sheer irony at how unproductive this is, I do recognize..)

Things you can do in 8 minutes (I figured out useful ways to apply myself in 480 seconds)

Unpack the dishwasher which your family left the house and left for you to do.

Blow all the excess sugar/baking soda off the table so mom think you’ve cleaned

Open the oven door 348349 times to over protectively check on the cookies

Stand in the middle of the kitchen with your eyes closed inhaling the smell, and going into a meditative state. But remembering to take the cookies out at 8 minutes on the dot.

So, you want the recipe for these sweet moist babies?! Keep scrolling, not far to go.

I talk too much.

This recipe made me 8 cookies. They don’t look that large, but they were incredibly filling – I would highly recommend that you cut the size of each cookie ball to make more manageable portions, especially as when going back for seconds…the mind only counts in simplistic ‘number of cookies eaten’ terms! But yeah, they taste amazing with milk/hot tea, and are like a mini meal on their own…

Preheat oven to 175*C

1 cup of peanut butter (Avoid using homemade, the texture will produce a flat, limp cookie)

1 cup of brown sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

1 large egg

Chocolate chips + chunks (Chunks should be the dominant type!)

Mix all the dry ingredients together, add the egg. Whisk in with a fork.

Freeze for 15 minutes/refrigerate for 2 hours prior to baking. This is especially important if you’re in a hot area. Warm cookie dough = flat cookies. (I’ll pretend that I didn’t skip this step due to impatience and kidding myself it’s okay because it snowed 2 weeks ago)

Take out of freezer, roll into cookie dough balls and place on baking sheets. Space them apart generously. (Brown cookie dough sheets are better for a soft chewy cookie)